Since the first day of his tenure at Auburn, Coach Hugh Freeze has hinted at, insinuated, and flat out said that he needs two or so years to get Auburn back on track and to where everyone expects Auburn to be as a national power. Forget what the nerd rival fans say or what 20 year olds that just started following football 3 years ago say, Auburn is a top 15 program all-time and that is where everybody expects them to be. They don’t like it because Auburn is the name of a city and not a state, but football is better when Auburn is good.
Two years of Hugh Freeze as Auburn’s head coach are in the books. The records aren’t great. There have been a few decent wins, some bad collapses, some bad losses, and a few not so awful losses. His rebuild isn’t complete, but this is the best roster he’s had at Auburn to date, so by all accounts, it should be time for some of those close losses to turn into close wins and for the collapses to go away completely.
Auburn has a new quarterback in former 5-star recruit Jackson Arnold, who came over from Oklahoma after he was benched for a freshman last season in a middle-of-the-road season for the Sooners. Don’t forget that their offensive coordinator was canned midseason, so maybe Jackson Arnold wasn’t the problem.
Arnold is currently the highest rated high school player to ever play at Auburn. But because he’s at Auburn and got pulled at Oklahoma in a tumultuous offensive situation, he must be mediocre at best. Did you see Hugh Freeze throw his visor in practice?! Dude must be awful. Shutup dorks.
Auburn’s offensive line is the most veteran Auburn offensive line in years. Auburn’s receiving corps is the deepest and possibly best ever. Auburn’s running backs are experienced and full of loyal dudes that waited their turn behind a guy named Tank Bigsby and another guy named Jarquez Hunter.
Yes, quarterback is important. Yes, we need to see what Arnold can do in game time. But the protection and the weapons around him are quite possibly the best since the days that another Auburn quarterback born in Texas was running the plays.
The Auburn defense played a lot of young guys last year. That means a year later those young guys are experienced. Experience is what you need on the road. You also need guys like future NFL Draft picks Keldric Faulk and Keyron Crawford to run down a quarterback that built up some hype with late 2024 season success over behemoths like Kansas and Houston.
Auburn’s kicking game couldn’t be worse than it was last year. The loss of Alex McPherson to illness last year really threw a kink in things. It seemed like he was better and would be back, but we’ll just have to see. Either way, there’s at least some prep and experience with him not being there instead of the mess that popped up last year.
Baylor is coming off an 8-5 season, with a two-touchdown bowl game loss to LSU. They return a quarterback. They return very little elsewhere. What does return isn’t proven. Outside of quarterback, anybody that seems somewhat proven is out for various reasons.
The home field advantage is the big positive for the Bears, but any field that has an open endzone doesn’t actually have an advantage. If you sell tickets that are for a spot on a grass hill, you don’t actually have an advantage. There’s a reason this game is being played on a Friday. It’s because it’s being played at a high school stadium.
Auburn has the better players, the better coach, and a feeling of a new, new beginning. It’s time for the work of the last two years to start to come to fruition. It may not be all the way back, but there’s no reason it can’t be back to at least the level before Gus Malzahn was wrongfully fired after the COVID season.
Baylor is Baylor. Being good is their outlier. Auburn is Auburn. The last few seasons of not so good things is the outlier. We return to the mean on a Friday night in Waco.
Jackson Arnold will use his legs for a touchdown and his arm for two more touchdowns. Cam Coleman and Eric Singleton, Jr. look like pros with 100 yards and a touchdown apiece. A 2- or 3-headed rushing attack shows us what old Auburn football looked like.
The 1st quarter will be sloppy because it’s game 1, but the difference in roster talent mixed with a mediocre home field advantage will end up being what you’d expect an Auburn-Baylor game to be.
Auburn 34, Baylor 17
